IIRC, in TS1 there are a couple of routes which use BNSF branding when sold to US customers, but which are generified for the rest of the world. Because lawyers. DTG have opted not to go that route with TSW.
With BNSF it is possible that DTG could have renegotiated the licensing so that it could appear in TSW and not just for US customers. After all, DTG has clearly stated on numerous occasions that they will not release unbranded content for TSW.
The problem with BNSF is that apparently the US and international trademarks are held by different entities; DTG had an agreement with one but not the other.
It can be the other way around. BNSF may be interested in being TSW2. It could be a good advertisement for them. In addition, TSW 2 is becoming a well-known train simulator.
BNSF stands for Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. They are freight train operator in the U.S.
And because BNSF was formed by the merger of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Milwaukee Road and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe besides many smaller RR, it controls a very great proportion of iconic western US routes - basically all of them not owned by Union Pacific.
This is a known issue with BNSF who can't sort out their IP issues. As solicitr says, they have a different system internationally than domestically so it's not easy
Yes. This is true of all NA freight railroads (for the most part. There is also a rather complex system of "trackage rights" where one RR is allowed to run over part of another's tracks).
Welcome to the truth of american railroads... Seems odd to Europeans but it's the way it is over there
What about railway traffic regulations? In the Czech Republic, everything is governed by regulations D1, D2, D3. All train operating companies must comply with these regulations.
I don't know specifically about railroad rules in the US, but many other "ruling bodies" in the US are fragmented and do their own thing, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was similar when it comes to railroads.
The national regulatory body is the Federal Surface Transportation Board, although safety regs are also issued by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Additional safety and employee management regs stem from labor union contracts. But in terms of things like signal systems, each RR has its own- often more than one, since the current Seven Survivors were all formed by mergers and thus inherited legacy systems. So, for example, CSX has three signal systems- Seaboard, Conrail and Chessie; they are gradually making Seaboard the standard and replacing the others.
This happened because the CB&Q owned the Chicago-area commuter line (now Metra), and the Seattle, Portland & Spokane owned Seattle commuter rail (Sounder). When Amtrak was formed, the private railroads had to hand over all their intercity passenger services, but not light commuter rail.
The Federal Railroad Administration has primary responsibility for safety issues and general oversight for railroad operations such as the NEC. The Surface Transportation Board is mostly concerned with the economic aspects of US railroading, mergers, acquisitions and line construction and closures.
My bad; I misspoke. Yes, the FRA is the safety and operational regulator; the NTSB is an investigative agency tasked with examining accidents. But the importance of the STB on railroad operations can't be understated; just at the moment they are riding herd on the proposed CSX-Pan Am takeover and the incipient CP/KCS merger, as well as the Amtrak/NS/CSX dispute over Gulf Coast passenger service.
Yes, the most interesting of which would be the ongoing struggle that Amtrak faces over its trackage rights and freight interference problems with the freight railroads.
Why wouldn't the railroads own their own right of way? They have always built and maintained their trackage. Even Amtrak owns a substantial part of the North East Corridor infrastructure and right of way. No, nothing of the sort. See my post above.
In the UK (and Europe from what I know) rights of way are generally public, ie owned and operated by the public. Indeed in the UK the TOCs pay the government to use the rails at all... There are private sections of railway but these are generally specific access to industry etc Of course in the UK (and again Europe) passenger services are almost always put ahead of freight and I believe that's another difference. This just wouldn't happen in the UK. The passenger service would always be given precedence
This was not the case in Britain prior to 1947; the LNER, GWR etc etc owned and maintained their own trackage, until the Government expropriated it.
This was a function of passenger service being more profitable than freight. In the US the situation is and since around 1920 has been the reverse; and since WW2 intercity passenger has always lost money.
Agreed. Then again the US is more geared to the car and planes than just about anything else from what I can tell.
I think in more "recent" years the EU has imposed a distinction between train and infrastructure operators, so for example there is Network Rail in the UK, RFF/SNCF in France, RFI/Trenitalia in Italy, etc... this was made in order to allow competitive third party rail operators, in the hope that competition would drive costs down, a bit like the airline deregulation act in the US.
Is there really much competition among the TOC's in the UK? My knowledge of the privatised railway is minimal, but my understanding is that awarding a franchise gives that company a monopoly over a particular area or set of routes. It reminds me of the way commercial TV franchises were awarded in the 1950's in the UK, which someone once described as "a license to print money".
Only on a very basic level. Some regions and routes there are multiple ways of getting from one place to another but for the most part you have the local / regional operator and an intercity operator. In the case of GWR they're the same, but then you also have CrossCountry which run some of the same routes (say from Bristol to Penzance) For the most part they're separate, but to get from London to Birmingham there are two or three ways (and operators) to do this, and you can use any of those routes within reason without paying more, but how many people are actively going to choose the train that stops 12 times over the one that stops once? So in essence there ISN'T competition in reality, but if the government can blame anyone bar themselves for how things are run then they get their wish All of this ended in the 90s/00s when all the local independent regions were subsumed into "ITV" and now we only have five "main channels", two of which are BBC, then ITV, channel 5 (owned by Hutchinson Media if I recollect correctly) and Channel 4 which is public owned but still has adverts... BBC channels don't have any adverts bar for their own programming
This caught my eye, Does that mean GN services will be included on the upcoming Brighton Mainline DLC?
No, it means they have some sort of license within their portfolio of licenses which means they can say that they're a partner of GN I also presume you mean Thameslink as Great Northern terminate at Moorgate and Kings Cross rather than going "South of the river" (same group of companies, but not GN itself)
There’s always a surprise just around the corner. BNSF in TSW could be one of those surprises, as could the appearance of any previously unavailable brand license. Situations and circumstances do change, so you never know.
I assume the license they have is in TS1, but the query above was in relation to the upcoming BML DLC in TSW2
Technically, host railroads are supposed to give Amtrak priority while operating on their tracks. As seen in these report cards handed out by Amtrak, some Class 1s are better at handing Amtrak than others....
For Germany its DB Netze which we don't see in game. If you're to stand on Schnellfahrstrecke Köln-Aachen you might find their ICE-S test train which usually runs on the fast track Köln to Düren or yellow painted track maintenance machinery
I do think Amtrak's scorecards are a bit self-serving; although freight delays are a real thing, they are trying to blame all delays on the freight RR and take no responsibility for their own ample ability to run late. I recall one delay of almost two hours, caused by the oncoming cafe cashier calling in sick, and the need to dredge up another one.
All our US Class 1 railroads care about anymore is cutting costs. It's all about profitability and making the corporate heads more rich and pleasing Wall street. They don't care about customer service anymore, nor do they care about employee safety or the livelihoods of the employees who carry the railroads on their shoulders day in and day out. It's what the railroads call "Precision Scheduled Railroading." Though I can assure you, that Class 1 freight trains in the US are not precision scheduled! What PSR aims to achieve is to make the Class 1 railroads and the trains they operate as efficient (they're not) as possible through extreme cost cutting measures. The most common method of cost cutting is to take two or three short trains and combine them into one very long train, which measure 12,000ft, on average, though they run trains much longer than that; up to 18,000ft sometimes. Mixed freight with over 200 wagons are common. The additional crews from the abolished trains are laid off or fired, even if they were getting close to retirement from the railroad. And safety is totally disregarded, you have long slow trains blocking street crossings for very long periods of time, totally blocking emergency services from getting through; or forcing them to take longer alternative routes and eating up precious time which they can not afford to waste! But the corporations don't care about the lives they've ruined, it's all about money to them.